Last Night's Tipple

Another dram of Tomintoul 16 year old Scotch. When I originally sampled this at Spec's before buying it, I didn't notice any peat at all, just sweet Sherried goodness, and my first full dram a few days ago was much the same. This time, however, I got a big shot of smoke on the nose when I first smelled it, and this smoke persisted for quite some time. It faded out about halfway through the glass. One of the reasons that I find spirits (or, at least, good spirits) endlessly interesting is that every sip can bring a different experience. The spirit evolves in the glass, and it evolves between drams. Undoubtedly, to a large extent, this is not the spirit evolving and changing but rather the taster doing so; but even if my tastes are evolving instead of the spirit, it's still stimulating to experience it happening.

It's not very common to see a bottling of 16 year old Scotch. There are many 15 year old Scotches, and many more 18 year old Scotches; but I can't think of more than a couple 16 year olds. The question with Tomintoul 16 is why the distiller decided to bottle it. Did he decide that 16 years was the perfect age to exhibit a particular set of characteristics that he wanted to exhibit? Well, maybe, but I figure that it was more of a marketing decision. Tomintoul is relatively unknown, so a 15 year old Tomintoul would lose out when competing with a 15 year old from a more well-known distillery. A 16 year old, however, would have an advantage among age-conscious consumers; and the evaporation loss between 15 and 16 years wouldn't be very much. A 16 year old Tomintoul is more likely to be economically viable than a 15 year old, in other words.

Last Night's Tipple

The label of my bottle of Bowmore Darkest single malt Islay Scotch (one of the old bottles containing 14-year old whisky, instead of the current -- and more expensive -- 15 year old version) has a little medallion in the center that says "From the No. 1 Vaults of Black Bowmore." The No. 1 Vaults are Bowmore's premier aging cellars, and Black Bowmore is a legendary special bottling released in 1964. It had been distilled in the 1920s and aged for 20 years in a first-fill Oloroso Sherry hogshead. That hogshead then began to leak, and the whisky in it was racked into Bourbon barrels to age for another 20 years. The 40 years of aging (20 of which in a hogshead which had contained the darkest of all the Sherry varieties) produced a Scotch that was opaque and dark as night. Supposedly, bottles of Black Bowmore come up for auction every now and then; and they typically go for astronomical sums.

This Darkest doesn't have quite the degree of color that Black Bowmore did, but it is plenty dark. It was aged for 12 years in ex-Bourbon barrels and then finished for an additional two years in ex-Sherry casks. I don't know what kind of Sherry those casks were, but I would bet that it wasn't fino -- the casks impart a great deal of color, sweetness, and flavor to the whisky; and a delicate Sherry like fino could not have had that kind of an impact. Bowmore's stills are relatively squat, and their charges are relatively heavy, both of which tend to reduce the copper contact during distillation. This makes the spirit heavy and pungent, and it takes a heavy and pungent Sherry like Oloroso to compete with it. And it does compete. The idea of a Sherry-finished Islay struck me as more than a bit odd when I first heard of it, but I think that it works with this whisky. The sweetness of the Sherry softens the smokiness and brininess of the Scotch, and it gives the whisky another dimension. The problem I have with most peaty Islay whiskies that I've had is that my enjoyment of them is mostly intellectual. Bowmore Darkest offers a good deal of sensual enjoyment, too.

Last Night's Tipple

Liquor Claus gave me two bottles of whisk(e)y for Christmas: a Glenfarclas 12 year old, which I wrote about back in December; and a bottle of Eagle Rare Single Barrel 10 year old Bourbon. I hadn't felt like drinking Bourbon until last night, so I hadn't opened the Eagle Rare. Last night I did, though.

Eagle Rare began life in the 1970s as a Wild Turkey knockoff. It was bottled at 101 proof, just like WT; and I suppose that the eagle was supposed to evoke memories about the debate over what the American national bird was to be. Ben Franklin thought it should have been the turkey; but the other founding fathers, in their infinite wisdom, realized that the eagle was a nobler and much more appropriate alternative. Similarly (I conjecture), Bourbon consumers would conclude that Eagle Rare was a nobler alternative to Wild Turkey. Originally a brand owned by Seagram's and distilled at what is now the Four Roses Distillery in Lawrenceburg (the Wild Turkey Distillery is located in the same town). Sazerac acquired the brand in 1989, and it's currently distilled at the Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort.

A few years ago, Sazerac decided to take Eagle Rare up-market. They lowered the proof from 101 to 90, put it in a fancy heavy-bottomed bottle, and made it a single barrel bottling. Oh, yeah -- they raised the price, too. All of these changes were calculated to appeal to the yuppie boutique Bourbon drinker, and they have. Sazerac believes that Eagle Rare will be one of the engines of growth for their Bourbon business in the years to come. Buffalo Trace has three Bourbon mashbills: a wheated one used for WL Weller; a high-rye one used for Ancient Age, Elmer T. Lee, Blanton's, and others; and a low-rye one used for Buffalo Trace, Old Charter, and Eagle Rare. I didn't know that Eagle Rare came from the low-rye mashbill until I looked it up just now, but it's hardly a surprise. The Bourbon was corny. There was very little bite. Instead, it was sweet and smooth. Despite the age, I didn't get a whole lot of overt wood flavor, although it did have a decent amount of vanilla that must have come from the toasting on the barrel staves. My reaction to it is a lot like my reaction to Old Charter: a nice, tasty Bourbon, but not one (like Bulleit or 1792 Ridgemont Reserve) that I could get really enthusiastic about.

Last Night's Tipple

Given that my dram the day before yesterday was Cragganmore Distiller's Edition, which was finished in ex-Port barrels, it seems reasonable to have another drink of the regular distillery bottling, the 12 year old, and see how it compares to the other.

It's worth pointing out that although the 12 year old bottling isn't finished in Sherry, Port, Rum, Madeira, Burgundy, or Sauternes barrels, it is not unacquainted with Sherry. I couldn't find any reference to Cragganmore's wood policy in any of the places that I looked, but I would bet money that at least some of the constituents in the final Cragganmore blend were aged in ex-Sherry butts. There is a certain nutty sweetness to this whisky that indicates this. The sherry isn't as pronounced as it is in an honest-to-goodness Sherried malt like Macallan, but it's there. Malty graininess comes through loud and clear too, though. It's fresh and clean and about as refreshing as something that's 40% alcohol can possibly be. The Distiller's Edition, on the other hand, is thick, heavy, and very sweet. There's not much malt there; it's all chocolate and dark fruit. It's wonderful in its own way, but it's a very different product. It just demonstrates one more time that just knowing which distillery a particular whisky comes from is not sufficient to be able to predict what it will taste like. I'm sure that professional tasters would be able to tell that both of these were from the same distillery without seeing the label. If I hadn't known, I doubt that I would have been able to.

Last Night's Tipple

The great divide in Scotch aging is between ex-Bourbon barrels and ex-Sherry casks. Up until 1946, most aging was done in ex-Sherry casks because British shippers imported Sherry into the country in cask and would sell the used casks to Scotch distillers dirt cheap once they had bottled the contents. But in 1946, US law began to require that Bourbon be aged in new, charred oak barrels. This meant that Bourbon distillers could only use their barrels once and were more than willing to sell them cheap to anyone who would take them. That, combined with Britain's steadily shrinking Sherry consumption, caused most distilleries to change their aging from virtually all ex-Sherry casks to virtually all ex-Bourbon casks. Most distilleries had some of both, of course, and the finished product would have been composed of whisky from both sources. But until Glenmorangie decided to try it, no distillery considered racking aging whisky from Bourbon barrels into Sherry casks or vice versa. It was a fantastic success, and so now just about every distillery copies them. And not just with Sherry. Distilleries have used Burgundy, Madeira, Sauternes, rum, and many other kinds of casks and barrels to "finish" their Scotch. Including Port. Port makes a lot of sense. Back in the 19th and early 20th Centuries, Britons probably drank as much port as they did Sherry, so lots of ex-Port pipes must have been used to age Scotch. So, given where Scotch had come from and the innovation that Glenmorangie made, it is perfectly reasonable that Diageo would have chosen to finish their Cragganmore Distiller's Edition malt in ex-Port pipes.

Port offers many of the same characteristics that Sherry does to Scotch, especially color and sweetness. Where Sherry adds nuttiness, Port adds fruitiness. I've never tried Glenmorangie's Port-finished malt, but I have a hard time believing that it's any better than this. This wood-finishing business seems gimmicky and largely marketing-driven to me, but it sure makes for delectable whisky.

Last Night's Tipple

The Aberfeldy distillery is owned by Dewar's, one of the great Scotch blenders which is in turn owned by Bacardi. Dewar's owns several other distilleries (Aultmore, Craigellachie, Macduff, and Royal Brackla), but Aberfeldy was the first of Dewar's distilleries and remains the heart of Dewar's blended whiskies. Dewar's White Label is Dewar's flagship product and is the sixth-best selling blended Scotch whisky in the world, but its popularity varies greatly from country to country. If you go to the Dewar's website, you'll have to enter your date of birth and country of residence before you're allowed to see the content; and the countries listed at the top of the dropdown list are the UK, the US, Greece, Lebanon, Spain, Venezuela, and China. It's a good bet that Dewar's sells more Scotch in those seven countries than anywhere else. The UK and the US make a lot of sense -- both have been huge consumers of Scotch for over a hundred years. But what do the other five have in common? As far as I can tell, not much. I have no idea why Dewar's would have taken off in those five countries to the exclusion of the many others whose residents have plenty of surplus income to spend on luxury spirits.

Blended Scotches, particularly entry-level blended Scotches like Johnnie Walker Red Label and Dewar's White Label, are generally smooth and gentle; and it's entirely appropriate that Aberfeldy would form the heart of blend. It's sweet, inoffensive, and unaggressive. There's a place for that, I think, and I enjoy drinking it. It just wouldn't make my list of the the best Scotches I've tried.

Last Night's Tipple

As day follows night, when I have a dram of Compass Box Eleuthera, I'll have a dram of Clynelish shortly thereafter. Clynelish is, of course, one of the two principal constituent malts in Eleuthera (the other being Caol Ila). Clynelish, you may recall, is a Diageo-owned distillery in the eastern coastal Highlands of Scotland. Every tasting note for Clynelish that I read mentions its waxy texture; but to be perfectly honest, I never have really gotten that. Chalk it up to my leaden palate. I don't dislike this malt, but it doesn't do much for me. There are many other lightly-peated malts that I'd rather drink than this, and most of them are cheaper, too.

Over the past couple of years, Diageo has dramatically expanded their Classic Malts series. It originally started out with Lagavulin, Talisker, Cragganmore, Oban, Glenkinchie, and Dalwhinnie. Now, it seems that just about every malt whiskey in Diageo's portfolio seems to be one of the Classic Malts. There's Royal Lochnagar (which I really, really wish were imported into the United States in its 12 year old form), Cardhu (the one that Spanish kids like to mix with Coca-Cola), Knockando, Glen Elgin, Caol Ila, and something called the Singleton of Glendullan. I gather from this that the Classic Malts have been a tremendously successful marketing device and that Diageo wants to milk it for all that it's worth. The justification for including Clynelish among the rest is that the distillery is located in the coastal east of the Scottish highlands, and there are very few distilleries close by. Diageo, and most other marketers of Scotch, like to subdivide Scotland into regions in an attempt to make the myriad distilleries more comprehensible. Clynelish is in the Highlands region, but the Highlands cover a lot of area. The lay of the land around Clynelish doesn't share a whole lot of similarities with, say, Oban or Edradour, which are also in the Highlands region. Diageo has responded to this obvious problem by subdividing Scotland still more; and with the subdivision comes the justification for adding new Classic Malts to represent those subdivisions. But I don't think that there is any real eastern coastal Highlands style of whisky. Yes, Clynelish is very different from Oban, but those differences don't have their origin in geography or geographic tradition. There's nothing wrong with Diageo trying to sell whisky, but consumers really shouldn't take the Classic Malts marketing propaganda too seriously.

Last Night's Tipple

It's hard to survive as a relatively small independent producer of Scotch whisky. Whisky distillation is a capital-intensive business -- stills and barrels aren't cheap, and neither are the excise taxes that have to be paid when the whisky is distilled (rather than years later when it's actually sold). Distillate can't legally be labeled as Scotch until it has aged for three years, it has to age for a significantly longer period of time before it's a viable single malt. What distilleries have traditionally done is to generate cash flow by selling young whisky to the blenders, but that's becoming more and more problematic as the industry consolidates. Diageo has all the young malt whisky that it needs for its blends, thank you very much, and the same can be said for all the other major spirits companies that produce blended Scotch. The commercial realities of the whisky business explain why there are so few independent distilleries left in Scotland and why so few distilleries have started up recently, despite the current Scotch boom.

Tomintoul, located near Ballindalloch on the river Spey, is therefore an anomaly. It was founded in the mid 1960s, much later than just about every malt distillery in Scotland and just before the Scotch bust era in the 1970s and 1980s. Somehow, it managed to survive that experience and is today owned by Angus Dundee Distillers, a small company based in London and Glasgow with a stable of two malt distilleries (the other being Glencadam, in the Highlands). Sure enough, they have their own line of blended Scotch, too. Whether that's because the big boys don't need Tomintoul and Glencadam or because Angus Dundee found that there's more margin to be had from selling your own blended whisky than there is from selling malt whisky in bulk to the blenders, I couldn't say. I can say that I have never seen any of the blends that Angus Dundee makes or markets, and I wonder if they're simply too small to have made it over here.

I had seen a Tomintoul 10 year old before, but it had never really registered with me. Yesterday, though, a representative of the US importer of Tomintoul, Medek Wines & Spirits, was at the Spec's warehouse downtown handing out samples of both the 10 year old and the 16 year old versions. What the heck, I thought, and so I tried both. The 10 year old is malty and fresh. The rep said that the target audience for it were those who were new to Scotch, and I can see that. It was tasty and uncomplicated. The 16 year old was better. There's a bit of peat, a lot of sherried sweetness, and a nice dose of malt. I liked it very much, so I ended up buying a bottle. I liked the full glass that I had last night, too. Tomintoul's slogan is "The Gentle Dram," and that accurately describes it. There's nothing aggressive about it, just what you would expect a good middle-of-the-road Scotch to taste like.

Last Night's Tipple

It appears from their website that Compass Box has gotten rid of their Eleuthera bottling from their range. You may recall that Eleuthera was their original peaty offering, consisting mainly of a vatting of Caol Ila and Clynelish. It makes sense that they've discontinued this for a couple of reasons. First, it is possible that their sources of Caol Ila or Clynelish dried up. For reasons that I discuss below, I think it unlikely that it was Caol Ila that disappeared, but it certainly is possible that Clynelish did. Clynelish is owned by Diageo, and Diageo recently "promoted" it into its Classic Malts series where previously it had not been extensively marketed as a single malt. It's possible that Diageo no longer had surplus whisky from Clynelish to sell, and Compass Box was unable to find a replacement that would have kept the style of the finished vatting consistent. Second, there's the matter of marketing. Who in the heck knows what to expect from a bottle of whisky named Eleuthera? If I had just seen it on the shelf and had not read about it beforehand, I certainly would not have. The replacement for Eleuthera in Compass Box's portfolio is called Peat Monster. The idea is the same: vat an Islay whisky with a non-Islay whisky to get the characteristics of both Islay and the Highlands. Where Eleuthera used Clynelish, Peat Monster uses Ardmore. Ardmore is an old-style peated whisky where Clynelish is unpeated, so Peat Monster should have a higher phenol content than Eleuthera did; but still the idea is the same. The name, though, is much more marketable, especially in the United States. In recent times, extreme levels of hops have been a big selling point for American microbrewed beer; and the same is true for peat content and Scotch. Peaty whiskies are very popular here, and both distilleries and vatters have taken advantage of this in a big way. Any idiot can tell that a bottle labeled Peat Monster will be peaty, so it's a much easier sell for Compass Box than Eleuthera was. Oh, one more bit of trivia: Compass Box says that the Islay for Peat Monster comes from "the village of Port Askaig, as well as some south shore whisky (as of late 2007)." Port Askaig is on the east coast of Islay very close to Caol Ila. It's also relatively close to Bunnahabhain, but Bunnahabhain rarely produces peaty whisky. I'd be willing to bet that the Port Askaig whisky is Caol Ila. There are three distilleries on the south shore of Islay: Lagavulin, Laphroaig, and Ardbeg. Lagavulin is in extremely short supply, and there isn't much aged Ardbeg available due to its underproduction and neglect for most of the 1990s. I'd bet that the "south shore whisky" is Laphroaig. In any event, it's interesting that Compass Box doesn't explicitly reveal its sources here since they are usually not shy about doing so. I can only guess that their reticence is due to agreements that they made with the distilleries they bought the whisky from.

I haven't had Compass Box Eleuthera in quite some time, and I can't come up with a good explanation for that. The addition of Clynelish makes it less overpoweringly peaty than peated Islay malts are by themselves, and I think that that's a good thing. Peat, at least to my palate, tends to dominate everything else. It's enjoyable enough, I suppose, but I like to taste the malt and the wood influence on the whisky, too. Having Clynelish in the blend allows me to do that. Alas, the bottle is almost gone, and I won't be able to replace it. Of course, even if Compass Box still produced it, I wouldn't be able to replace it since they don't distribute in Texas apparently.

Last Night's Tipple

It's been quite some time since I last tasted my Glenrothes Special Reserve. I bought the bottle shortly before I started in on American whiskey, followed by wine; and I'm just now getting back to Scotch. You will recall that Glenrothes is one of the malt distilleries owned by the Edrington Group, which also owns such other properties as Highland Park, Macallan, and Tamdhu; and that its recent claim to fame lies in their primary bottlings being vintage. Vintage spirits are rarities, and they're practically unheard-of in the world of Scotch. The rarity and novelty of vintage Scotches and the quality of their bottlings allow Glenrothes to sell their vintage Scotches for a pretty penny, and it's also what allows them to sell their non-vintage, non-age-designated Special Reserve bottling for more than most 12 year old Scotches on the market.

Well, I can't honestly claim to feel ripped off by the price. What matters is the quality of the spirit in the bottle, not the age on the bottle; and the quality of the spirit in the bottle is high. Speyside malts are known for their elegance and finesse. This Scotch doesn't have a whole lot of either. It's BIG and significantly more peaty than most Speyside whiskies. I get a lot of apple on the palate, but that's not the dominant impression. Rather, it's in the background as the body and the smoke pound my senses. I like it, although I probably wouldn't want to drink it every day.

Oh, and the last time I was in Spec's, I noticed that the 1992 vintage of Glenrothes is available now, and for "only" $55 a bottle. That's not inexpensive, but it's cheaper than the '91. It's also not unreasonable for a 15 year old Scotch.

More Islay

I spoke to Ben this evening, and, as ever, he was in search of BIGGER, PEATIER ISLAY SCOTCHES. He specifically wanted to know if I knew anything about a Scotch that he had recently seen in liquor store named Auld Reekie. I had seen it, but I didn't know anything about it. I mentioned that I had also seen a bottling called The Big Smoke, but I also knew next to nothing about that, either. Through the miracle of the Interweb, though, knowledge is but a few keystrokes away.

Both Auld Reekie and The Big Smoke are vatted Islay malts produced by Duncan Taylor & Co., an independent bottler of Scotch originally based in Glasgow with a long and distinguished history. They don't reveal which distilleries provide the whisky that goes into either bottling, but it's not like the list of possibles is very long. It appears from casual reading that principal difference between The Big Smoke and Auld Reekie is age: Auld Reekie is 12 years old, while The Big Smoke is younger (how much younger is not specified). The Big Smoke also comes in both a 40% bottling and a cask-strength (60%) bottling, although I've only ever seen the 40% bottling. Age tends to mellow and reduce the impact of peat, so I would expect The Big Smoke to be wilder and more smoky. Neither one of them is cheap (The Big Smoke 40% sells for $41 a fifth at Spec's, while Auld Reekie goes for nearly $57 a fifth), even when compared with the available Islay distillery bottlings of comparable age. If I were Ben (and believed that the mo' peaty the mo' better), I might give The Big Smoke try. In fact, I hope he does, which would allow me to bum a dram off of him without investing the money in a whole bottle.

Last Night's Tipple

Many consumers believe that older is better when it comes to spirits. That's why you see those 40 year old Scotches selling for hundreds of dollars locked in glass display cases at liquor stores, and I would imagine that it's the reason that distilleries like Highland Park are expanding the range of bottlings to include older whiskies. In Highland Park's case, they've had a 12 year old and an 18 year old bottling for quite some time. The 15 year old bottling is relatively new, and I would imagine that one of the principal reasons that they introduced it was to appeal to consumers who think that older is better but don't want to spring for the 18 year old bottling. That's not to say that the 15 year old bottling isn't interesting in its own right or that the Highland Park people haven't striven to do different things with the 15 year old bottling from what they have done with the 12 year old (it does have a different aging program), just that I would be surprised if the driving force behind the introduction of the 15 year old bottling were not marketing concerns (namely, the need to get an older whisky out there to appeal to the "older is better" crowd).

Well, just as older is not necessarily better with wine, it's not necessarily better with spirits. The longer a spirit remains in barrel, the more it dries out and is dominated by the barrel's characteristics. Up to a certain point, that's desirable, but I generally would rather not suck on barrel staves when I drink a glass of whisky. To my palate, the 12 year old Highland Park is enjoyable than the 15 year old Highland Park -- richer, more complex, more interesting. I don't know whether the difference is due to the age of the whisky or the different aging program (12 year old uses more ex-Sherry butts than does the 15 year old), but I do like the 12 year old better. Which isn't to say that I don't enjoy the 15 year old very much or that I won't happily drink up the rest of the bottle.

Last Night's Tipple

Whenever I browse the Scotch aisle at Spec's, I always see a good number of Scotches, some labeled as single malt and some labeled as blended, that I've never heard of and about which I know nothing. Some of the time, I avoid these for that reason; but sometimes, I'm just in the mood to take a flyer. Yesterday, I was in the mood to take a flyer, and I bought a bottle of Drumguish Single Highland Scotch Whisky. I can't offer much in the way of an explanation about why I selected this one over the others that I saw. It probably was largely due to the fact that it was on sale for $17 a fifth.

It turns out that Drumguish is a bottling produced by the Speyside Distillery, which is located on the upper Spey near the town of Drumguish. Although there is no age designation on the bottle, some Interweb sources that I found say that it's 5 years old. Speyside also produces a 12 year old whisky under the Speyside label. I have tried this, and I like it, especially at the price (around $30 a bottle) -- it's a fresh, fragrant, malty Scotch, unpeated and aged exclusively in ex-Bourbon barrels. The distillery only started production at the end of 1990, making it one of the youngest distilleries in Scotland. It also means that they have only had stocks of aged whisky for a few years. While they were waiting for their aging stocks to make it to 12 years and become commercially viable as premium Scotch, they got by from selling blended whisky and the young Drumguish.

So is Drumguish like a young version of Speyside 12 year old? Well, no. Not even close. It's peated, and pretty significantly so. It's smokier to my nose than Highland Park 12 year old, and HP is pretty smoky. Not Ardbeg smoky, but pretty smoky. It's a different kind of smoke, too. Where Islay malts remind me of nothing so much as liquid alcoholic beef jerky, Drumguish smells like burned grain. Not unappealing, but very different from Islays. I also get a load of vanilla that reminds me of Bourbon, probably giving a hint of the barrels that it's aged in. On the palate, it's sweet and grainy. There's not a whole lot to it, but I like it, especially at the price.

Last Night's Tipple

Long about 9:00 PM on every New Year's Eve, Liquor Claus's father, Liquor Claus Emeritus will take down whatever bottle of Scotch he happens to be enjoying at the moment and offer a dram to all the menfolk present. Well, he would actually be more than happy to share some with the womenfolk present, too, but he knows by now that they won't take him up on the offer. Every year it's a different bottle; in years past, I remember Glenlivet, Lagavulin, and Talisker. This year, it was Strathisla 12 year old.

Strathisla is a Speyside distillery that is principally known for providing the heart of the blend for the Chivas Regal blended Scotch whiskies. The Chivas brothers were Aberdeen grocers in the middle of the 19th Century, and like many other Scottish grocers, they branched into Scotch blending. Almost from the very start, the malt whisky from the Strathisla distillery (also known as Milton and Milltown at various points in its existence) formed an important component of those blends. In 1950, Seagram, which had acquired the Chivas Regal brand at some point along the way, also acquired the Strathisla distillery, largely to ensure the availability of Strathisla malt for Chivas blends. Strathisla still doesn't have a huge capacity, and because it's so important to Chivas Regal and because Chivas Regal is much more of a cash cow for Pernod Ricard (the current owner) than Strathisla ever could be, it's still a bit difficult to find as a single malt. But find it (and share it) Liquor Claus Emeritus did.

My first impression was, "Wow, this Scotch is dry." Most liquor has at least some impression of sweetness, but not this one. And that was despite the fact that I could smell the nuttiness of sherry (which is typically although not always sweet) in the Scotch, indicating that it had been at least partially aged in used sherry butts. After a couple of minutes, I started picking up a good deal of malt, too, but that initial impression of dryness remained. I like this and would not turn down a glass (or bottle) in the future; but I don't think that I would seek it out again. But thank you, Liquor Claus Emeritus!

Last Night's Tipple

Another dram of Macallan 10 year old Fine Oak. The bottle is almost gone, and that's fine. This whisky is tasty, with lots of sherry, but it's really not anything special. I wouldn't exactly turn this down if someone offered it to me as a gift, but I doubt that I'll be buying it again. It's over $30 a bottle, and it's possible to find any number of Scotches that are more interesting than this one at a similar price point.

In the United States, Macallan's regular range begins with the 12 year old. Why did they decide to bottle a 10 year old when they came out with the Fine Oak line? My sense, just from viewing the Scotches that are and have been available, is that anything younger than 12 years old is a bit of a marketing challenge, at least for mass-market single malts, which Macallan unquestionably is. Laphroaig, Glenmorangie, and Balvenie all have 10 year old expressions; but the emphasis for Glenmorangie and Balvenie is and has been on the 12 year old expressions. I would imagine that Macallan is trying to do the same thing with the 10 year old Fine Oak that Balvenie does with the 10 year old Founder's Reserve and Glenmorangie does with their 10 year old expression: get something on the market at a slightly lower price point that can serve to pull consumers into the line, where they will spend more on the older bottlings. The standard 12 year old bottling is nearly $42 a fifth, while the 10 year old Fine Oak is around $32. Somebody who has never had Macallan before might hesitate less to spend $32 than $42; and once he spends the $32, he's more likely to move up to the $42 bottling. At least, that's the only thing that I can come up with.

Last Night's Tipple

I had another dram of Dalwhinnie 15 year old last night, probably because the Cragganmore from the night before got me onto a Diageo Scotch kick. Dalwhinnie, you will recall, is the Highlands representative in Diageo's Classic Malts series. This is a bit anomalous, though, because the Dalwhinnie distillery is located in the watershed of the River Spey and is relatively close to some other distilleries that are classified as Speysides. However, back before there was an extensive road network, one of the principal routes from the Western Highlands to the east was via the Glen Spean, which terminates close to Dalwhinnie. So maybe classifying Dalwhinnie as a Highland malt makes sense. Of course, these geographic classifications are really a poor method of bringing order to the chaos that is single malt Scotch because there is such tremendous variation in the character of malts produced within these geographic regions. Heck, there often is a tremendous variation in character in different malts produced at the same distillery.

In any event, Dalwhinnie is very good. The shoulder label says that it's "The Gentle Spirit", and that's very true. There's a gentle waft of peat, and the palate is all honey and malt. If you don't like this, there's not much hope that you'll like any Scotch that isn't aggressively peated.

(As an aside, Spec's also has a significant discount on the Dalwhinnie Distiller's Edition, which was finished in Oloroso Sherry butts. I'm sure it is very good, and I'm sure that I will be forced to buy it at some point.)

Last Night's Tipple

Liquor Claus was exceptionally generous to me this year. In addition to the bottle of Glenfarclas that I wrote about yesterday, she also gave me a bottle of 10 year old Eagle Rare Bourbon (another of the fine products from the Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort) and -- are you ready for this? -- a Spec's key. That's Spec's frequent shopper program, and it mostly gets the key holder a discount of a dollar or two on a constantly-changing array of products. But sometimes the discounts are larger, as they were yesterday on Cragganmore Distiller's Edition Scotch. $8 a bottle was significant, and I had heard good things about the Scotch; so, in the spirit of adventure, I bought a bottle to try it out.

You will recall that Cragganmore is owned by liquor giant Diageo and that it is one of Diageo's "Classic Malts" (along with others like Talisker, Dalwhinnie, Lagavulin, and Glenkinchie), meaning that Diageo markets it as the ideal representative of all that's best about Speyside Scotches. It's helpful to remember that it is just marketing and that Cragganmore hasn't for time immemorial been regarded as the best Speyside Scotch by all informed observers (the distillery was only founded in 1869), but it is very good and well worth the money it costs if you like Speyside Scotch (and I do). Back in 2005, to expand the "Classic Malts" brand, Diageo came out with a number of so-called Distiller's Editions for their principal Classic Malts. Though they are aged for different amounts of time, all of these whiskies are "finished" in special wood, meaning that they have been racked from the barrels that they spent most of their time aging in to other barrels where they spend the last few months before bottling. Glenmorangie pioneered this technique, and it has become very popular with Scotch consumers. In the case of this Cragganmore, it was distilled in 1992 and bottled in 2005, and it ended its aging in used Port barrels. The Port influence is immediately apparent, both from the deep color of the whisky and the sweet wine richness in both the aroma and the flavor. There is also plenty of malt, of course, and the net effect is of a full-bodied dessert Scotch. It's delicious, and it makes me want to try the rest of the Distiller's Editions. Damn you, Diageo marketing machine!

Last Night's Tipple

Liquor Claus paid me a visit yesterday, and part of her bounty was a bottle of 12 year old Glenfarclas single malt Scotch. Glenfarclas is something of an oddity in the world of Scotch. It was established by a farmer named Robert Hay in 1836, and he sold it to John Grant in 1865. It has remained the property of the Grant family since (there are other Grants involved in the Scotch industry, but none of them are related to the Glenfarclas Grants), and it is the only distillery that the Grant family owns. That's right -- in an era of huge multinational corporations seizing control of the Scotch business (and the Bourbon business), Glenfarclas remains an independent. And that's not the only way that it's unusual. It has the largest stills in Speyside, and it is one of the few distilleries left that uses direct heat to fire their stills (as opposed to steam coils that provide indirect heat). They experimented with steam heat on one of their stills in the 1980s and found that the character of the whisky was changed and so abandoned the experiment. Finally, there's the aging program. Most Scotch today is aged in used Bourbon barrels; Glenfarclas apparently is aged exclusively in used sherry butts (Oloroso and Fino, according to the website), making it an interesting counterpoint to another sherried Speyside malt, Macallan.

You will recall that the more copper contact distiller's beer and low wines have during distillation, the "cleaner", lighter, and freer of congeners the finished new make spirit will have. Larger stills tend to promote more copper contact, as do ball- or lamp-shaped tops of the stills. Since Glenfarclas has the largest stills in Speyside and those stills have ball-shaped tops, you would expect that its whisky would be light and elegant. I wouldn't call it inelegant, but it certainly isn't light. Perhaps it's the sherry influence that gives it weight, I don't know. In any event, it smells like nutty fruitcake (in a good way), and there's a lot of malt on the palate. I generally like sherried Scotches, and I like this one, too. Thank you, Liquor Claus. You're the best.

(Incidentally, that picture above was taken from the Glenfarclas website. Within the last year or two, Glenfarclas has changed the bottle for their 12 year old expression. Instead of the tall, clear bottle shown above, it's now tinted brown and squat. I can't find a picture of the new bottle online, though, so we'll just have to make due with the old one.)

Last Night's Tipple

There are a number of super-aged rye whiskeys either on the market today or on the market in recent years, including the various releases of Sazerac 18 as part of the Buffalo Trace Antique Collection, Rittenhouse 21 and 23 year old rye from Heaven Hill, Black Maple Hill 16 year old (I think), Hirsch 10 year old, and Van Winkle Family Reserve 13 year old. Where are all of these old ryes coming from? The plethora of bottlings suggests that there was a lot of rye distillation going on in Kentucky in the 1980s, but this isn't really the case. More rye is being produced today than twenty years ago, and today's rye production is a mere thimbleful in an ocean of Bourbon. There are lots of bottlings of old rye, but those bottlings don't contain much total volume. And what volume they do contain often has the same ultimate source: according to American whiskey expert extrordinaire Chuck Cowdery, several of the super-aged ryes listed above were distilled for the Cream of Kentucky brand (now defunct, but still owned by Buffalo Trace and possibly up for revival sometime soon) in the 1980s at the Bernheim Distillery in Louisville (currently owned by Heaven Hill). I know that the Van Winkle Family Reserve rye has had other sources as well (or maybe just another source), but it wouldn't surprise me at all if it were the same juice as is in the 18 year old Sazerac rye that I've had. They taste very similar to me.

My currently-open bottle of Van Winkle Family Reserve rye is almost empty, but not to worry: I was recently able to pick up another bottle of it to replace this one. This one continues to impress -- lots of spicy cinnamon bread pudding on the nose, with a definite rye kick on the palate. It's an excellent whiskey, and one worth its relatively high price.

Last Night's Tipple

The last stop on this week's Tour of Wild Turkey is the plain-old flagship 101 proof Bourbon bottling, again. My experience with this whiskey last night was similar to the one I had on Saturday night but better. This time, the whiskey exhibited more the butterscotch aromas that I like in Wild Turkey products and less of the new whiskey, cotton candy smell. It was also not as rough. The difference? Well, aside from the unreliability of the taster, last night I had the ceiling fan going where I did not on Sunday night. More air, different flavors and aromas. I would do well to have the ceiling fan going in the future.